College professor says ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ is violent and racist

College professor says ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ is violent and racist

A professor from the University of Washington has written an article claiming the cartoon “SpongeBob SquarePants” shows racism and violence.

In the article “Unsettling SpongeBob and the Legacies of Violence on Bikini Bottom,” professor Holly Barker says the residents of Bikini Bottom, which is the town where SpongeBob lives, colonized the area by taking the land from native Bikinian people.

“The cartoon desensitizes viewers to the violence of settler colonialism, normalizes and erases the displacement of the Bikinian people from their ancestral land, and whitewashes US military rampages on the islands in the history and narratives of Bikini,” Barker says in the article.